depravity

Etymology

It is formed from English deprave + -ity,^[2][3][4] and Klein adds that this followed the pattern of pravity.^[5] The OED, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English see it from the other side, as that older noun extended or altered under the influence of the verb, and the OED notes that neither Latin nor French has a matching form.^[6][7][8] The older noun, recorded from before 1513, comes from Middle French pravité and Latin prāvitās (“crookedness, perverseness”),^[6][2] from prāvus (“crooked, wrong”),^[6][2] a word of unknown origin.^[2] The verb is from dēprāvō (“to distort, pervert, corrupt”), perhaps through French, and is formed from dē- and the same adjective.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A depraved act or practice: 1641, in Milton's Of Reformation.^[6][9] Etymonline dates the word to the 1640s, in the sense of a depraved state.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word first spread as a general term for a corrupted quality, in Browne's Religio Medici of 1643; that use died out after 1739.^[6] The moral sense, perversion of character and wickedness, appears in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646 and is the one that lasted.^[6] Johnson (1755) gives only "corruption; a vitiated state".^[4] In 1757 Edwards used it in his treatise on original sin for the corruption of human nature held to be inborn, often in the phrase total depravity.^[6][2]

Timeline

• 1641 – a depraved act or practice, in Milton.^[6][9]
• 1643 – perverted or corrupted quality in general (obsolete by 1739).^[6]
• 1646 – moral corruption, wickedness.^[6]
• 1757 – in theology, the inborn corruption of human nature.^[6][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state or quality of being morally corrupt; wickedness: a tale of greed and depravity.^[9][10][6]
2. (theology) The sinful state held by some religions to be natural to humankind since original sin.^[9][6][7]
3. A corrupt act or practice.^{[9][6][7][10]}
4. (obsolete, 1643–1739) Corrupted or defective quality in general.^[6][7]

Word family

• nondepravity
• total depravity

Related words

• deprave
• depraved
• pravity

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins